


Stray Dog Chase

by nishizono



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: ae_match, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-08
Updated: 2011-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nishizono/pseuds/nishizono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ll never have a romance, but Arthur is pretty sure they’re falling in love. The problem is that they’re strays: undesirables who’ve been left in the rain for so long they shy away from anything too stable. They’ve always been able to find each other, but Arthur isn’t sure they’ll ever find home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray Dog Chase

They’ll never have a romance, but Arthur is pretty sure they’re falling in love. The problem is that they’re strays: undesirables who’ve been left in the rain for so long they shy away from anything too stable. They’ve always been able to find each other, but Arthur isn’t sure they’ll ever find home.

 

 

The first couple seconds of their relationship are so weird that Arthur isn’t entirely convinced he’s not dreaming, although technically speaking, he is.

They’re heavily sedated and three levels deep, crouched behind a pillar together while bullets whizz by on either side. Eames cocks his gun, looks at Arthur and says, “Come home with me tonight.”

“What?” says Arthur, but Eames is already gone, gunning down projections with the cold brutality of an experienced killer.

 

 

They make out in the cab on the way back to Eames’s hotel. They kiss in the lobby and again in the stairwell, and all the way down the hall to Eames’s room. The sex is passionate and playful, and Arthur leaves the next morning while Eames is still asleep.

He doesn’t leave a note.

 

 

Five months later, Eames ambushes him in Milan.

Arthur is wandering through an art fair, enjoying the bustle of the crowd, when Eames steps out from behind a merchant stall and blocks his path. He’s wearing mirrored sunglasses and a straw fedora, but Arthur would know him anywhere; he smells like cigarettes and incense.

Arthur doesn’t kiss him.

“This is the only time I’ll chase you,” says Eames. His eyes are hidden, and his hands are in his pockets. Arthur has never seen him so closed off.

“I never asked you to chase me,” says Arthur with his heart pounding in his ears. He makes it all the way to the street before he turns and looks behind him.

Eames is gone.

 

 

They kiss again in Niagra, on the Canadian side of the falls. There are no special circumstances, no sudden epiphanies of feeling, just the last day of a job and one more kiss for the sake of remembering.

“I was starting to forget what it felt like,” says Arthur as he breaks away and touches a fingertip to Eames’s bottom lip.

Eames closes his eyes and moves Arthur’s hand away. “My plane leaves in two hours.”

“Where did you say you were going?”

“I didn’t,” says Eames, his voice barely audible over the roar of the waterfalls. There’s a long pause before he bows his head and touches his nose to Arthur’s. “I’ll stay if you tell me to.”

Arthur swallows and bunches his fingers in the front of Eames’s shirt. He takes a few deep breaths and then takes a step back. “You should hurry. You don’t want to miss your flight.”

The look on Eames’s face would break his heart if there was anything left to break.

 

 

“I haven’t been very careful with you, have I?” asks Arthur. He hasn’t slept in three days thanks to the Fischer job, and the lights of Paris are just a blur beneath the balcony.

Eames is leaning against the railing with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other. His head is bowed, and his shoulders are slumped. “No, I suppose you haven’t,” he says. “But I don’t need you to be careful with me any more than you need me to chase you.”

Arthur feels his stomach drop and wonders if that’s the kick.

 

 

They part ways in Los Angeles.

 

 

Arthur catches up with Eames three days later in Mombasa.

“I didn’t think you’d come back here,” says Arthur as he follows Eames out of the bar.

Eames jerks in surprise and whirls around to face Arthur. His eyes are wide and his lips are parted, which Arthur uses to his advantage when he pulls Eames into a kiss. It takes a second for Eames to react, but then he slips an arm around Arthur’s waist and murmurs, “Someone taught me once that the best place to hide is at the beginning.”

“Cobb?” asks Arthur.

“You,” says Eames.

There’s that feeling again: a sudden loss of air that feels like a kick to the stomach. “Fuck,” Arthur whispers. “Why the fuck didn’t you say something?”

“I said you didn’t have to be careful.”

Arthur stares at Eames, at his stupid straw fedora and the wrinkles around his eyes, and his voice is hoarse when he replies, “I don’t think it’s you we need to worry about.”

Eames’s eyebrows go up, and he just stares down at Arthur for a moment before he takes a step back and says, “You’ve got me if you want me, but you know it’s not going to be easy.”

“We never have been,” says Arthur.

“Right then,” says Eames. He looks toward the end of the street where a line of taxis are waiting for last call passengers. “I was thinking of getting a cab,” he says, then glances at Arthur and adds, “you’re welcome to come with me, if you want.”

Arthur watches him walk away, and when Eames stops to look back at him, Arthur smiles and follows him home.


End file.
